The revolution in cloud infrastructure has begun

Major shifts are occurring in the cloud infrastructure space aimed at giving businesses greater ownership over how cloud infrastructure and stacks are built, says VMware country manager Ian Moore.

It was no accident that two significant developments occurred this week. On Wednesday, Citrix bought Cloud.com for US$200m, giving it ownership over infrastructure that defines how different types of clouds are built.

That same day, VMware CEO Paul Maritz announced its new vSphere 5 product, which he said will accelerate towards more efficient and automated cloud infrastructure, redefining how resources are managed and secured.

The new country manager at VMware in Ireland, Ian Moore, agrees the language that can be used to promote the cloud often misses the point that serious discussions need to be had about the infrastructure layer before CFOs and managing directors are mesmerised by discussions around hypervisors.

“We’re focused on delivering a complete stack for the cloud era, taking a more modern approach to infrastructure and enabling end-user computing. Primarily, we’re focused on the infrastructural layer.”

Moore said the market is now at a strategic turning point and more than 50pc of apps that run on x86 systems can be run from the data centre.

“This will help ordinary businesses accelerate their journey towards the cloud through self-service and automation. The whole thing is becoming automated and that’s what we love about it.”

VMware’s parent company EMC said it will be integrating with the new cloud infrastructure suite from VMware that includes VMware vSphere 5, VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5 and VMware vCloud® Director 1.5.

“The new VMware cloud infrastructure suite, combined with EMC technology, will help customers to virtualise business-critical applications, provide a clear path to both private and public clouds and bring the highest levels of security to their clouds,” said EMC country manager Jason Ward.

Two worlds colliding

Moore agrees that consumers are most likely embracing the cloud faster than businesses and the reason for that has been infrastructure.

“It’s about making the infrastructure and the management of that infrastructure more responsive. You and I in our private lives can access things like Facebook and the various app stores and make things happen, download software and get down to business – there’s none of this waiting three weeks for consultants or specialists to deliver.

“This is where the two worlds are colliding – the consumer-driven market and business.

“Businesses want the same agility with IT that ordinary people enjoy in their digital lives. They don’t want the complexity. The key to this is ensuring the infrastructure that makes it happen is responsive through self-service and automation,” Moore said.